The Enchanted Self’s Third Gateway to Happiness is all about learning to meet our needs, and how to negotiate for ourselves. Often kids certainly know what their needs are better than adults, because everything is less disguised, fresher and closer to the surface. But they very often don’t know how to negotiate for themselves or how to find ways to get their needs met, particularly if they live in difficult families So we have to help them again.
Advice for young women in this category, how they might be able to sort of go around difficult circumstances and manage:
Get mentors outside of the household. A neighbor who will — who’s really a good person, who maybe you can go over and the two of you can cook together in her kitchen now and then. It can be a teacher that takes an interest in you. Perhaps she introduces you to fine literature or she finds a young piano teacher so you can take lessons at a price your parents can afford. I don’t mean a formal mentor like we think of in coaching, where you pay someone by the hour. I simply mean someone who sees you in a positive light and enriches your life in positive ways.
I’m talking about people who can take you beyond your family circumstances.
